‘Wage envy’ between AI workers and their peers is a corporate time bomb

THE late rapper, The Notorious BIG, might not have been one for financial statements, but he would have summed up Samsung Electronics’ latest numbers thusly: “Mo money, mo problems.”

On Jul 7, the world’s largest memory chipmaker reported that its preliminary quarterly profit surged by 1,900 per cent year on year, thanks to the world’s insatiable artificial intelligence-driven demand for its products.

For any other company, a third straight quarter of record operating profit would be a bed of roses. But at Samsung, that could make its “wage envy” problem among workers in different departments an even thornier matter.